As they became more clear I could see that they were both female. One was pale and painfully thin, with long flowing robes. She nodded her bobbed head and said, “I’m Penelope Pennington.” The other, with shorter clothes, longer hair, and a beautiful face, said, “I’m Pamela, Mandy’s mother.”
“Oh!”
The beautiful ghost reached out and took her child’s hand. “Mandy, I’ve been so sad without you.”
Mandy was all smiles. She went to her mother with her arms open and hugged her. “I’m sorry, Mama. I just wanted to see some TV. Ever since that man left…”
I sat there watching them, nonplussed. How many times had I said you could never trust a ghost? How many times had I warned myself against taking any of their talk at face value? And yet, confronted with a child, I’d tumbled for her phony story like a ton of bricks. Oh brother. Never again!
“I’m glad you’re back where you belong, Mandy,” I said aloud. “Be good to your mother. Okay?”
I wanted to thank the ghosts, but there was no time. I could hear Roy talking, coming down the hall toward the library. When I looked back, the ghosts were gone—all of them.
I rose and went to meet Roy. Right now, I needed him badly. Hugs and kind words, maybe a kiss or two, would help me more than any doctor.
But there was still a lot to think over. Maybe later I would find a way to thank the ghosts for helping me defeat Matt Pennington. From what the paramedics had told me, he was on his way to the state mental facility twenty miles to the north. In the meantime, I was still tasked with the job of deciding what to do with this house. What was I going to recommend?
But I would think about that later. Right now, I didn’t need anything but Roy’s arms around me.
Roy had other plans. Not much later I found myself stuffed into his car and heading for the hospital, my protestations ignored.
“I know you think you’re fine,” he said wryly. “But I when I look at you and see dried blood, I get a different opinion. Let’s just see what the professionals have to say in the matter.”
I swallowed hard and glanced at him sideways. “Are you going to stay with me?” I asked, half embarrassed that I really did feel like I needed that.
He pulled into a parking spot, turned off the engine and turned to look at me. I saw a new, wavering tenderness in his blue eyes and for just a second or two, I thought he was going to say something….I don’t know. Something special. Something intimate. Something I might be able to count on.
But then I saw the impulse fade as he thought better of it. He smiled instead. “Sure I’ll stay with you,” he said, his voice kind of husky. “Just as long as you need me.”
He kissed me, but he hadn’t said it. What it was I didn’t really know. But I couldn’t help but think it would have bound us closer, bound us deeper. So I felt its loss.
Still, he kissed me.
I was okay, of course. Banged up and bruised, but nothing very serious. And Roy did stay with me—sort of. He tried hard, but every three minutes his cell phone buzzed with another “very important” call and he had to go out in the hall.
That was alright, though. I knew I was just being a baby, so I gave myself a talking to and let it go. And anyway, his absence produced some space for Dante to come in and visit.
He was just saying goodbye. He made that clear from the first.
“Where are you going?” I asked after I’d thanked him for what he’d done for me at the Pennington House. He’d barely come back and now he was going again. I was already feeling the ache of an emptiness inside. He’d been gone so long this last time. It seemed like losing a part of myself when he wasn’t there.
He hesitated, giving me that long distance stare he was so good at. “It’s hard to explain,” he said. “I’ve got work to do. There’s a sort of war going on in the part of the spiritual world I belong to. I have to be there for my leader. I have to be there for my side.”
“Your side? You mean, sort of like a gang war?”
He grinned. “Sort of. There are factions struggling for power. It’s always that way. The cycle of being.”
I nodded. There was something about him that was making me smile. “One day you’re up, the next you’re down. Like that?”
“Sort of.” His smile softened and he touched my cheek. I could feel it, but when I reached up to put my hand over his, there was nothing there.
“Is it dangerous?” I asked, and I didn’t feel like smiling anymore.
He hesitated. “Not so much,” he said in a way that let me know it was much worse than he was going to admit.
A shiver went through me. “Be careful,” I said urgently.
He gave me a wink and began to fade away. A sob caught at my breath, but he was already gone.
The doctor came back in and so did Roy, looking distracted. His mind was on other things and so was mine, so I didn’t bug him about it. We went to dinner but we had to cut it short when he got a call and had to provide backup for another officer.
I held his hand for a moment. Then I let him go.
Chapter Fourteen
I got back into the swing of things at work, smiling at Vlad’s dumb jokes and coordinating preparations for the Wine Festival. I tried to set aside some extra time to be with Bebe. I knew we needed to talk. She’d been through some emotionally wrenching stuff over the last few days and we needed to clear the air between us.
“Popcorn,” I said the next evening as we finished up the dishes. “That’s what we need. A big bowl of popcorn and a long talk. Are you up for it?”
She hesitated, then relented and smiled at me. “Sure,” she said.
I fixed the popcorn and she made hot cocoa and we talked and laughed and even cried a little. And finally, we got to the subject of Mandy.
“I miss her,” Bebe admitted. “I hardly knew her, and yet, I miss her. Isn’t that silly?”
“No,” I said, taking her hand. “She’s an adorable little ghost. How could you not miss her?”
She looked at me cautiously. “Do you think I could….?”
“No,” I countered quickly, knowing where this was going. “No Bebe. You know that would only make things worse. Mandy needs to tend to her own journey, and you need to find a man who wants to have babies. Or at least, wants to have you badly enough to accept babies.” I tried to smile. “And then find out he really wants them just as much as you do in the end.”
She smiled at me, but her eyes were misting. “I miss her,” she said softly.
Her heartbreak touched me, but I had to try to help her fight against it. “You miss the emotions she stirred in you. And they are still there, just waiting for another go at life.”
“Maybe.” She sighed.
We went on, chatting about one thing and another, but her melancholy had sent my own emotions into a spin. I thought about Dante and how I felt about him, how he touched something in me no other man had ever done. And yet he wasn’t a man. Not really. Was I like Bebe, reaching for the impossible? Oh yeah. And I knew it.
Still, I felt better now that we’d talked a bit about it. Bebe needed to find the right man. And I…what did I need? Maybe I needed to move away to somewhere that ghosts didn’t visit. One way or another, they tended to turn my life upside down. Should I go?
It was another two days before we all really had a chance to try to put things into perspective and figure out what exactly we’d all been through. Bebe invited everyone over for dinner—her special walnut shrimp. The party included me and Jill, Captain Stone, Roy, and Jagger—Jill’s boyfriend. She even invited Ginny Genera, but she was fasting this week in preparation for a desert run and had to beg off. We ate Bebe’s delicious feast and then sat around the patio table and sipped sangria while the sun went down, streaking peach and scarlet across the skies over the ocean. And we talked.
Bebe started us down the explanation path. “What I want to know is—why did Matt Pennington’s parents pretend he’d been drowned? What on earth was that all about?”
<
br /> Captain Stone looked like he would just as soon stay off this topic, but the rest of us were like starving dogs on a piece of meat, all clamoring to be fed.
He grimaced and turned to Roy. “Why don’t you tell them what they want to know?” he said, his eyes with a strange, heavy-lidded look.
Roy nodded. “From what we’ve been able to find out, interviewing relatives and people who knew the family for generations, Matt was always a strange child. He would probably have been diagnosed with autism today. He had behavioral problems and got kicked out of every private school they sent him to. Meanwhile, Gretchen, his sister, was the apple of her parents’ eye. So when Matt killed her by pushing her off the balcony—whether by accident or intent—it was the last straw for old man Pennington. He had strings he could pull and he got his son committed under a fictitious name to a mental institution far, far away. Meanwhile, he told everyone around here that Matt had drowned in the pool. That never happened. But Matt was gone, and the charade worked for years and years.”
Jill was looking puzzled. “But Matt’s mother Susan….”
“Committed suicide a few months after Matt was sent away,” Roy said. “She couldn’t live with all the lies and the heartbreak.”
“So after all these years, how did Matt get back here?”
“He escaped from the mental institution a few months ago. He killed a doctor during his break out, by the way, then made tracks back to California. No one knew where he’d gone. All records of the original commitment to the institution were missing. They didn’t know where to look. But he remembered where he’d come from, and he came back and holed up in the house. He knew all the passageways and secret hiding places, so he could easily hide when the house was searched.”
I nodded. “It was pretty obvious that someone was sleeping in one of the few remaining beds,” I said. “But what I don’t get is the sexy negligée I found in the dryer.”
Roy grinned. “What’s so unusual about that? Even a murderous crook has needs, you know.”
I glared at him and Captain Stone broke in. “He had a ‘girl friend’ from time to time. At least, that’s what he told us.”
I frowned. “Her name wasn’t Astrid, was it?”
Stone actually cracked a smile. It only lasted for a second or two, but it sure did look like a real, live smile. “No. The girlfriend was hired by the hour from what I can find. And not too often.”
“So now we know who Matt is, and who he was,” Jagger put in, looking quizzical. “But what exactly did he do? Is he Jerry Moore’s killer? And what about Tom Hatchett?”
Stone looked at him levelly. “We are prepared to charge Matt with murder. Twice. And that’s on top of what the mental institution is planning for him.”
“Oh.” Jagger looked a bit overwhelmed. “You’ve got evidence for all that?”
“We do. We believe he killed Jerry because of what Jerry was trying to do,” Stone added helpfully.
Jagger shook his head. It was obvious he just hadn’t gotten up to speed on things yet. “And what was that exactly?”
“He pretended to be the illegitimate son of Alexander in hopes of gaining some control over the Pennington property. From what we’ve been able to ascertain, he had no legitimate claim at all. He was just trying to tie things up while he and his partner, Richard Karl, looted everything of value from the house, piece by piece.”
“Richard and Jerry and Celinda,” I mused. “So she was in on it too?”
He shrugged. “That’s for the court to decide.”
I frowned. “I’m pretty surprised all these things could be going on under Tom’s watchful gaze. Do you suppose he really didn’t know about any of it?”
“We’ll probably never know for sure.”
“I think he knew,” said Jill. “I mean, just from the way he acted when Jerry was found dead. He was hopping around like a monkey, acting like he knew something we didn’t. And then he acted like he was prepared to start blackmailing people with what he knew.”
“Wait a minute,” Bebe said, frowning. “Why was Celinda so obsessed with keeping control of that notebook where Tom wrote down the neighborhood activities? What was her game at that point?”
“She didn’t want anyone to know that Richard had been to the house just before Jerry was killed,” I offered, looking at Roy. “Wasn’t that it?”
“We think so. We still haven’t got a complete story from the woman. And Richard won’t talk. But we’ll get there eventually.” Roy glanced at his captain, then went on. “Tom did call to report someone in the house twice. That must have been Matt. He probably saw him passing a window or something. But when we went out to check on it, we didn’t find anyone. Of course, at that point, we didn’t know about the secret passageways.”
My eyes widened on that one. “So did you find them? Have they been mapped out?”
“We found some of them. I’m willing to bet there are more.”
“Do you have any idea what they were for?”
“Probably built around the time of the Prohibition,” Captain Stone said. “For moving smuggled liquor. At least, that’s our assumption.”
“There is probably a direct connection between the Pennington House and the Moore’s,” Roy said. “We just haven’t found it yet.”
Stone nodded and looked at me. “Maybe you’ll find it when you go ahead with the plans to make the place into a museum.”
“Who told you that?” I asked. Hey, I hadn’t submitted my report yet. Someone was jumping the gun. Or maybe the fix was in and I was the last to know about it.
But he shrugged, looking innocent. “I don’t know. Someone said something that made me think things were trending that way. Maybe I’m wrong.”
I threw him a dark look but I decided to let it go. “So tell me about these secret passageways. What are they like?”
“There’s one long one underground. It goes from the basement to the street behind the Moore’s house. That seems to be the way Matt took to get in and out of the house without being seen. The area it opens to is very brushy and provided ample cover for him to sneak out of the area without being noticed.”
I nodded. “I thought there would be something like that. But what about in the house itself? How did Matt snatch Bebe and Jill from right under my nose when we were in the main house?”
“There seems to be a pattern of crawl-ways running along in tandem to the path of the hallways. Here and there are panels that slide open if you push the right places. We haven’t explored it all yet, but that seems to be the general idea.”
Bebe was shaking her head. “Don’t ask me. All I know is, one minute I was exploring the place and the next I woke up in the hospital. I think I’m thankful I wasn’t conscious the rest of the time. That was something I’d just as soon miss out on.”
“Me too,” said Jill. “That chloroform gave me the worst headache. But it was worth it to avoid knowing what that evil guy was doing to us.”
Jagger gave her a hug and she smiled up into his eyes. I looked at Bebe. She was smiling at Captain Stone the same way. I looked at Roy. He was staring into space as though thinking through another problem. I rose and grabbed his hand.
“Come on,” I said. “Take a walk with me. We need to go out and enjoy the last bit of time before the vineyards go dormant.”
He came willingly enough, tucking me under his arm as we walked and pulling me close. Sami, Bebe’s black cat, came with us, dashing in and out from behind grape vines, playing tag with the leaves in the breeze and acting happy as a clam—until Silver, the big gray cat appeared out of nowhere. Suddenly Sami was sullen. All the fun had gone out of the evening for him. Roy and I laughed at the cats, and they retreated back toward the house.
We didn’t talk until we got half way up the rise toward the new Italian restaurant that had taken over the hillside.
When we got to the lookout point, we stopped and turned to look back over the valley. The air was cool and I pressed closer to his warm body. He kisse
d me and I smiled up at him.
“I need to thank you,” I said softly. “You saved me.”
He looked at me sideways and scrunched up his face. “Okay, I had a hand in your recovery,” he said slowly. “But I’ve got to say, you pretty much saved yourself. I was just there in time to pick up the pieces.”
I smiled. I knew there had to be a reason why I liked this man. “The truth is, the ghosts of Pennington House had a lot to do with it,” I told him. “Without them, I don’t think I could have done a thing.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Ghosts again, huh?” he said at last.
“Ghosts again,” I said readily. “Ghosts forever. That’s what it looks like. At least, if I stay around here.”
He frowned, staring at me. “What are you saying? That you don’t see ghosts everywhere? Just around here?”
I nodded, even though that ignored the fact that I’d known one of them since childhood. Dante had always been a part of my life. “So it seems. And believe me, there have been times when I’ve thought I should leave in order to get away from them.”
He was quiet for a long moment and we stood side by side, staring out at the gorgeous sunset.
“Don’t leave, Mele,” he said at last, turning and pulling me into his arms again. “I need you here.”
I gazed up into his eyes. “Really? Do you mean it?”
He nodded. I smiled, feeling warm, feeling wanted.
“Okay then. I guess I’d better stay.”
“Good.” He dropped a kiss on my neck, then leaned back and looked into my face. “Just forget all that ghost stuff, okay? You don’t need it. I think you’ll be happier if you can ditch it.”
I stared at him, realizing with a sudden jolt that he thought I was delusional. Slowly, I pulled out of his arms and turned away. The warm, wanted feeling evaporated and I was back to feeling all alone and lonely. Maybe that was just the way things were meant to be.
The sound on an angry shout came down the hill from the area of the new restaurant. We turned in time to see a car peel out of the parking lot and race down the hill, going much too fast. I felt Roy tensing up.
Little Ghost Lost (Destiny Bay Cozy Mysteries Book 5) Page 13
